


An Armful of Lies

by Barbedbeat



Category: A Smuggler's Chronicles, Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-21 04:57:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17636357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barbedbeat/pseuds/Barbedbeat
Summary: Excerpt from my novel-in-the-making





	An Armful of Lies

Ägon put down his mug, gingerly aligning its bottom with the ochre circle coffee had painted on the wood underneath it.  
In spite of his frequent attempts at swallowing, his mouth felt dry, and his tongue decidedly too big for his mouth.  
He knew full well the moment had come, the dreaded moment for him to engage in conversation.  
Small talk was the last thing he wished to delve in at the moment, but both Ikai and Smug had invited him to join their table, low-key welcoming him in their appointed officer corner, which meant he had to muster all of his mettle and dig up the conversational skills his chivalrous upbringing had seared into his brain.

He cleared his throat and laced his fingers onto his lap in an effort to look at ease, though that was truly not the case.  
  
“So, captain,” Ägon started, raising his chin in direction of Smug’s stump, “how did that happen? I’m sure there must be quite the story behind it, no?”

Not quite the best choice for an ice-breaker, he admitted, but now it was too late to do anything about it.  
So, he resorted to biting down on his blossoming grimace and hoped nobody would realize how red his ears had gotten.  
Smug, on the other hand, didn’t seem fazed in the least.  
“Oh, you mean this?”  
She raised her mechanical arm in the air, sending its fingers wiggling in a steady wave. In spite of its skeletal appearance, the movements of that contraption were so slick and life-like it bordered the uncanny.  
“Well, it’s nowhere as glamorous as you might think, laddie.”  
She shrugged, and took a long drag off her cigarette.  
“In short--”

“--in short, my wife’s a huge dork, and likes drinking trouble juice for breakfast, along with her coffee and a couple pancakes.”  
Rewana’s voice chimed from behind the counter where she stood, a pile of dirty dishes in her hand, an impish grin on her face.  
“It shouldn’t come off as a surprise that she keeps hurting herself spectacularly every fifteen min-- hey!!”

Smug’s beret had landed straight on her forehead, interrupting her train of thought and prying a chuckle out of her.  
“Thank you for your input, sweetheart, but that’s not what the kid wanted to know. As I was saying...”  
Ägon pressed his spine against the backrest of his chair, studying Smug’s features as she spoke. For the first time since he’d met her, the captain’s face was relaxed, and her smile sincere, with a playful spark toying at the corner of her eyes.  
There, away from the sea and in the languid light of the Tail’s dining hall, she didn’t look threatening. Like, at all.  
Once shed her skin of commander, she was a completely normal woman -- an extraordinarily tall and respect-inducing woman -- but a normal one at that.  
And, conversely, Ägon wasn’t an underling anymore. He was just a kid, a young boy who’d asked her a question, and as such was being treated.  
Even Ikai looked a tad less dour than usual, though perhaps that had to do with the glass of absinthe he was in the process of nursing.  
“... it happened while I was still serving under Maddox, soon after I got appointed my First Officer brevet. I was twenty-three at the time, which is to say something like...” Smug counted on her fingers, lips moving silently as she indulged in some quick mental math, “eight years ago. Oh boy, time really flies doesn’t it?! At any rate, there I was, standing on deck while the Chimera skirted Tatalopo’s archipelago. We’d pounced in the middle of an extraordinary heat wave, which meant Feral activity was on the rise, _and_ that I was in charge of scanning the waters case one of those beasts decided to come take a bite off our hull. ‘Twas nearly midday when a school of drakes passed some two-hundred meters from us. Most of them didn’t even bother looking at the ship, busy as they were chasing fish and whatnot, but this big male here-- and when I say _big_ ,” Smug bit on the butt of her smoke and splayed her arms to their maximum width, forcing Ikai to bend in order to avoid an accidental backhand, “I mean its head was _this_ long-- wanted to be a huge showoff, and before I could even blow my whistle here it was, swimming at us so fast you’d think it got fire lapping at its ass.”  
She took a huge sip from her tankard before resuming.

“Now, I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen a drake up close, have you?”  
Ägon shifted nervously on his chair and reached for his coffee.  
“No, I can’t say I have.”  
“Well, let me tell you, son: those things are terrifying. They’re as big as blue whales, and nearly as strong. Only, blue whales can’t spit fire, but they can. And fire’s a bad thing to have aboard a steamship, so you got to be careful when dealing with those things, and you got to deal with ‘em fast. Now, back in the days we only had two serviceable harpoons on board: the starboard cannon and the port cannon. Roggin was in charge of the first, and I of the latter. So, when the Feral came ramming onto our right side, I was peachy. Our gunner had never missed a shot, up to that point, but luck wasn’t on my side that day. When I heard the charge blow a hole the water, I knew two things. The first was that Roggins had fucked up. The second, that we were jibing, and now there was an ugly-ass muzzle staring straight at me, horns and leathery flaps and all. I saw immediately the beast was too close, but Maddox ordered me to shoot anyway. So I… I obeyed.”  
The woman sighed, blowing a thick cloud of smoke straight in Ägon’s face. There was a strange edge to her voice, and a slight shake had gotten hold of her prosthesis.  
“Captain, I didn’t mean… if it makes you uneasy, we could very well change subject.”  
_Actually, I’d very much like it_ , the kid completed in his mind.  
  
Smug looked up at him, and her lips bent in a wry smile.  
“What? Oh no, no: pay me no mind. It’s just… very vivid. Memories, Ägon.” She raked her fingers through her scalp, causing a tuft of hair to stand to attention.  
“Some are good, some are bad. But you gotta learn and live with both. Also, I got a story to tell, and Ancients smite me, I will finish telling it.”  
She tossed the butt of her cigarette in the ashtray and promptly lit herself another.  
“Were was I? Oh yeah: I shot. Well, drake was too close, I said. So, when my harpoon skewered it right through the neck, the charge took a while to go off. And before it did, the beast started screeching bloody murder and thrashing around like it were possessed. The harpoon chain got all tangled up, the cannon got caught in it, and my hand with it. I was nearly dragged overboard, but Maddox and this gentleman right here,” she said, poking Ikai in the ribs, “kept me right in place. My hand had other plans, though.”  
Ägon saw Ikai shiver.  
“Ancients gracious, Smug, don’t-- don’t remind me. Please.”  
“Why not? It’s a fine evening for reminiscence, don’t you agree?”  
The man squeezed his eyes shut.  
“No. Not at all. Not for this kind of reminiscence, at least. Ancients… fuck.”  
He reared his head and downed his glass in a single gulp.  
“I still remember, you know? Like it was yesterday. All the blood… and those sounds you made, I… that’s it, I’m having nightmares tonight. And maybe tomorrow, too.”  
“The sounds I mad-- well, next time to occasion presents itself I’m going to rip your hand off with a rusty chain. And _then_ we’ll see if you’ll be in the mood to sing Altus’ Heart Ballad or not.”  
“I never said I’d start singing a lovely ballad, just that you sounded like a boar with a live eel up its a--”  
“Avast, sailor!”

Smug slapped the table with enough force to send it shaking.  
“Shut that trap and go get us another round. Beer for me, whatever you want for you, and-- what’s it you want, kid? Coffee? Whiskey? Seaweed tea? A lollipop?”  
“I, uh,” Ägon stuttered, “I’ll get another coffee, if that’s not too much of a bother.”  
“Fine! You heard Eggy here: here’s the coin, now get out of my sight, with your boars and live eels in tow.”  
Her tone was brash, but both her and Ikai seemed to be on the brink of laughter.  
Maybe that was just their way of joking, the boy thought.  
Or perhaps that was the kind of humour people who spent a lifetime at sea and caught too much sun on a daily basis ended up developing.  
_Grotesque_ , he mouthed, half oblivious to the steaming cup of coffee Ikai had just plopped under his nose.

Once Ikai had sat back down and everyone had received their new drinks, Smug reprised.  
“So, yeah: I lost my hand, that day, cut clean from the wrist down. The rest was taken by sepsis, and my elbow got plopped on a metal table at the Waystation’s clinic, some half kilometer from here. Not a fun experience in the least, my lad. And even less so when your meat is turning all shades of green and grey and your world black as you’re stuck in a sweltering ship cabin first, and in a hospital’s cell then, alone and more than a month from home. All in all, I must add...” She turned around, and nodded in the direction of Rewana, who was now well busy cleaning a majestic pile of tankards with a wet rag, “... that if it were not for the amazing woman standing behind the bar right now, I wouldn’t probably have made it. Morale goes a long way when you’re struggling with searing, mind-boggling fevers and a constant phantom-limb curse.”  
Ägon bit his lip pensively, slowly savouring his coffee.  
So, Smug had vulnerabilities, too. And… and feelings.  
She was nothing but a mere mortal, susceptible to pain and sadness as well.  
Who would have thought.  
He blinked stupidly at her, holding her gaze for much longer than he intended.  
When he realized, her metal fingers had already snapped twice before his nose.

“Hey, Eggy-boy. You ok? You kinda zoned-out there.”  
“Oh? Oh, no, no: I’m fine, really, just… ”

He swallowed another gulp of coffee, burning his tongue in the process.  
“It was-- ow! It was an interesting thing to share, captain, really. Good story, that. Thank you.”  
He cocked his head.  
“But again, I imagine all of you seafaring folks must have quite a baggage of tales worth telling, no?”  
“Oh, I don’t know, Ägon.”  
Ikai’s tone was half amused, half resigned.  
“Stories to tell? Sure. We got aplenty, I’ll give you that. Not all of them are something you’d like, let alone _want_ to hear, though, I assure you.”  
“Hmm,” Smug agreed, nodding wistfully as she smoked, “ain’t it the truth.”

A thin wall of ice began forming between them, with Ikai and his captain on one side, and Ägon, alone, on the other.  
Or so he imagined, at any rate.  
Those two people sitting before him had shared more than he could possibly begin to fathom and, in spite of that rare moment of inclusion, Ägon would forever feel like an intruder in their shadow.  
An intruder who was too young to understand, too alien to share with them anything but a fake smile and handful words, too biased to…

Too biased to ever be one of them.  
His gaze wandered to the leftmost corner of the room, where Shtembi, Wilde, Roenn and Kolo were knee-deep in their umpteenth round of Royal Snap, and suddenly felt as if his stomach were being pulled down to his ankles by an unknown force.  
Dread, that was.  
Dread, aided by the steely maws of shame.  
In that moment, there were only two words he burned to say, but had no idea how to utter.  
He brought a finger to his lips, and inhaled deeply.  
“You all sound like you’ve been through quite a lot indeed,” he said finally, swiping his heart underneath a thick carpet of indifference.  
“I’m sorry.”  
  


 


End file.
